Thomas m



Ggf/72A N. PETERS, PNOTOAUTHOGRAFHER. WASHINGTON D C UNITED STATES PATENT OEEICE.

IMPROVEMENT IN COFFINS.

Specification forming` part of Letters Patent No. 10|. l S1, dated March 22,1870.

.To all whom, it may concern,.-

Be it known that I, THOMAS M. TAYLOR, of the city, county, and State of New York, have invented certain Improvements in Cofns; and I do hereby declare that the following, taken in connection with the drawings which accompany and form part of this specification, is a description of'my invention sufficient to enable those skilled in the art to prac'- tiee it.

My invention is an improvement upon the coffin patented to Mahlon R. Margerum, dated September26, 1865, and numbered 50,144, and which is owned by myself and my partners in business, asappears by the Patent Office records. In his mode of-eonstruction both sides and one end of the coffin are formed of a single piece of lumber, which, in order to make the short curve at the end, is saw-eut or kerfed with close cuts, weakening the wood very materially. To make such a coffin of full average size requires a piece of lumber of about fourteen feet in length, and as choice wood is generally used it is frequently difficult and often costly to obtain proper pieces. In making such eoflins, also, this piece forits wholelength, both at its sides and at yits bent end, is necessarily perpendicular to the coffin-bottom, and therefore precludes any adaptation of it to that prevalent form which demands that at certain points the sides shall incline somewhat to the horizon.

Another` mode of construction, invented by myself, differed from that of Margerum in dispensing with the curved or bent head, and in connecting two bent sides to the usual separate head and foot pieces, the sides being bent by steaming or otherwise, but not sawcut or kerfedybut such bending was in no wise peculiar, the wood being merely bowed at the proper place, leaving it in such condition that when these sides were put upon the coiiin their entire surfaces were in vertical planes. This was an improvement upon the Margerum construction, in being not only far more economical, but in admitting of constructing the head and foot in the approved mode, while securing all the advantages of the strength and simplicity of his sides, and avoiding the unseemly appearance and weakened condition of his rounded heads. But a coffin is almost universally made or sought to be made with a greater breadth at its top than. on its bottom at that portion corresponding to the shoulders of thel corpse. By neither of the above modes could that be accomplished while the ends of the sides stood in vertical planes, as customary.

The object of my invention is to form a coffin whose sides, each made of a single bent piece, shall at those points where desired be strictly vertical, and at other portions be in clined outward from the coffin-bottom, having thereby a larger swell at the top line than at the bott-om line, such peculiar form being attained without any sawing or kerfing or weakening` of the wood, but by bending a flat board while steamed or otherwise into this peculiar shape. The apparatus which I have devised for this purpose may form the subject of an independent application for a patent, and I shall therefore not describe it here further than may be necessary for the purposes of this application. The fiat board, of appropriate length and breadth for a side piece, previously steamed or not, as may be found requisite in the particular ease, is firmly clamped by one end in the apparatus, and then by its free end it is borne down with something of a torsionalv action upon a former composed, preferably, of a series of rods not arranged in the same or parallel planes, and adapted to give to the board not a mere regular bend, but a peculiar and irregular one, such that at that portion usually the broadest in eoffins a gentle bend or curvature on one edge of the board shall gradually be intensified toward its opposite edge. The result of this is that the radius of the curvature at the bottom edge is shorter than that at the top edge, so that aline drawn from the crest or apex of the swell at one edge to that of the other edge shall be in a plane forming an acute angle with the general plane of the board, and so that the chord which would subtend the are or curvature at one edge shall be longer than that of the other edge. Y

In the drawings, Figure l represents a side View of one of my improved coffins: made agreeably to my invention. Fig. 2 is a top view of the saine with the top or cover re-` moved; and Fig. 3 is a eross-section, looking toward the head-board, taken at the line x m 0f Fig. l.

It will now be seen from the preceding description and the drawings that the sides a, formed as above stated, may be secured to the bottom piece, b, and to the head and foot- 'and the line 2 2 the greatest swell at the bottom edge, while the dotted line l 2 in Fig. 1 is drawn connecting these swells, and showing that they are not in the same vertical line, the point l being nearer the head-board. A line drawn from and connecting the points 3 4, and a similar one drawn to connect 5 6, show plainly also the different arcs or curvatures such chords would subtend. The vertical ends 5 7 5 7,in Fig. 3, show also plainly by contrast how the sides a a diverge upward from each other, and incline outward at the bend of the sides. The head and foot pieces may incline to the horizon or not, as custom may warrant.

No unusually large or costly pieces of wood are required toV make my improved Collin; but pieces which under some circumstances would not admit of successful sawing or keriing and 4 then bending will be available to make the sides in the manner I have above described.

I do not claim, broadly, a wood coffin having solid sides, nor do I claim anything shown i or described in the rejected application of C. Bulkley; but I claimfm A coiiin whose sides, formed of solid woodhaving no kerl? or crosscuts therein to give curvature, are by steaming or otherwise so bent that when their ends are secured to the bottom pieceand to the edges of the head and foot pieces their curvature or swell shall be greater at the top than at the bottom line, substantially asshown and described.

TI-IOS. M. TAYLOR. Vitnesses:

B. V. SrEvENsoN, CHARLES D. Horornuss. 

